Category Archives: ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT, ART, HDR Photography, nature, photography

Elfin Forrest: In Curiosity

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For the post I am going to break it up a bit.  After spending some more time at The Elfin Forrest Reserve in Escondido I Went back to embracing the painterly thoughts ( Thank you Art Wolf).  Any way I did some work with HDR Images and truly one of the first times I feel good about them, Using a combination of Lr and Nik the images came out well.

I also post edited them a little farther, being in the area nothing feels quite real there to me.  Elfin foreest is almost to quite and every thing is a touch… well off.  Almost as if the whole area is a fantasy or a dream.

Elfin forrest is a great place for hiking and walking and I always enjoy my trips there and really should make the short trek more often.  I think My favorite of this set is probably the dark Oak tree, all though the roots are nice too.

For the Second set of images i decided to embrace the lens zoom techniques some photographers use to create representation images.  I Shot several of these more than I normally wood trying to create a painterly type image.  Also I use a long exposure and a pin hole body cap on the Image of the stream and rocks to create a similar feel.

The lens zoom images all though I like the idea of the technique i usually find my images lacking, this time i feel some of them are truly out of bounds good.

 

ABSTRACT, alternative process, ART, beach, climate change, photography, water, waves

Waves: Still Soaking

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With in the photo degradation series I am continuing to work on the waves project.  I am varying the length of time the prints soak in the ocean water. As well as what I am doing tot he prints prior to putting them into the container.

Interesting results are coming through strangely enough the blue/cyan seems to be the first that is affected by the process.  So these become very red/magenta and yellow images.  The pictures Im posting are all direct scans with no editing.

Also I decided to through one of the photos into the bleaching solution used for the cyanotypes, while no change was immediately noted, the picture has a definite browning to the over all work.  I did not allow it to soak long, i was just experimenting but its interesting and I may decided to move forward a little on this thing.

ABSTRACT, ART, climate change, environment, FINE ART, landscape, photography

Further Degradation in the Waves series.

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So I spent some time soaking some other prints in the ocean water.  I love the  way this is altering the prints.  As time moves forward I am soaking them individually rather than multiples at a time as well as floating them on top of the water.

Either way I feel that the spirit and theme of the work is working well together.  I really am altering the representation of the thing that they are of.

ABSTRACT, ART, enviroment, environment, FINE ART, photography

The Ocean

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So along the same lines of The Composted Prints , I am interested in altering the prints after they are printed.  This was a set I did during one of my frequant trips to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, Ca.  I place I draw a lot of centering and calm from.  I decided months ago to allow the peace in my mind, the meditation and connection to take photos.

I took a lot of photos this trip never changing focus or any camera setting during the adventure.  The question was what to do with these photos after ward.  I started with

Slough_Waves_16x20 grid_nikedit
This is the re edit of the piece. I am actually much happier with this and I may consider doing a purely black and white one as well

Tides , After a while a was unhappy with these images and reedited the photos and produced a different look.  While I enjoy this image I wanted something more, I felt that the images were not the thing that I have found so consoling, but simply a representation of such.  So I began looking to it in a different way.

I made prints of the Individual images in the larger piece.  At 5×5 they are not large but big enough to take notice.  This last weekend I spent some meditative time at the location and collected some of the tide waters as i was there.  After coming home in the evening with a jar full of ocean water, I shoved 4 of the prints into the salted water.  Forty Eight hours passed with no changes to the images, and i was beginning to thing that this would be an exercise in idea rather than physical alteration.

I awoke this morning to sudden and noticeable change, there was cyan flecks floating in the ocean water and the prints had been forever changes to the one of a kind images.

ABSTRACT, ART, climate change, compost, cycles, decay, enviroment, environment, FINE ART, herb, home garden, photography, plants, terrarium, Uncategorized

Revisiting Cycles: Composting the Prints

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So when I was working on the cycles project I made some C-Type prints of all photos I took of the jars.  Cycles had always been a project I wanted to go on for a while and it led me to create a small home compost jar for my kitchen waste.  Inspired by Matthew Brandt I decided to add the prints to the pile.

I added the photos to the compost on March 1st and pulled them out of the compost on the 5th and was pleasantly surprised by the changes in only a few days.  Large swathes of red are now apparent on the print, oranges and yellows are streaked amongst  the previously high key greens and browns.  The white has been stained in a great umber color.

Overall I am very happy with these results and will do it with the remainder of the prints.  I am very curious to see what may happen as the the compost continues to break down will different chemical compounds reveal themselves and effect the print.  Also the compost is extremely moist right now and I am waiting to see what will happen as it dries out.

 

ABSTRACT, ART, environment, landscape, nature, Uncategorized

Robert Adams: Inspiration

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Robert Adams has continued to inspire my work in the photographic arts.  Though I may take some of his ideas and some of the ose of others and begin to combine them.  I started a project that was heavily influenced by his seascape work last fall, I plan to continue this work but it has gone through a few changes and reedits of the photos.

The following was inspired From Adams’ sea scape work. I posted the before but i have never posted the new edit’s of the images.  My first time editing the images i tried very hard to follow with his asthetics of the more blown out image, mostly high key but with occasional areas of dark black.

After hanging these on the wall at the begining of the semester, and stareing at them for weeks on end, I was no longer ok with the original edit, and though I have not done all of the images yet I am happy with my new image.

The new image I decided to go darker, more contrast and to provide some texture into the image through Nik color effects.  Some how to me this felt more tactile, and really portrayed why I love the ocean as much as I do.

Next step on this project is to make some physical prints, and destroy them.

This is the re edit of the piece. I am actually much happier with this and I may consider doing a purely black and white one as well
Curves
ABSTRACT, ART, FINE ART, photography, Uncategorized

Art Wolf

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I started creating art in high school thinking i would be a fantasy illustrator.  Inspired by works of Frank Frezzetta, David McKean, BROM and others.  As I journeyed through my artistic studies I was drawn to the impressionists, the to the surrealists and dada works.  Slowly but surely i was led away from illustration by the works Of Dalí, Picasso, Monet to a world of multimedia collage.  The multimedia is where is started to move to photography, wanting to have photographic images to incorporate into my paintings.  After a time I found that I really did enjoy creating a photographic image, that tack sharp print perfectly composed, perfectly exposed white to black.  In recent years with out realizing I have fallen back on my roots as a painter, trying to create more painterly photographs with less concern on perfect exposure and sharpness.

I guess I tell the previous story because I identify with Art Wolfs work, and following that of art history.  So much art history and inspiration exists in me that I have forgotten to use it in different media.  But watching the video has definitely inspired me to continue to follow along onto a painterly course with my more current work.  Especially looking into hand heald long exposures to create an impression of a scene. I really would like to combine my love for surrealism much more into photo graphic works.  However, for some reason I do not want to go the photomontage way of doing it, I routinely right in my journal Dalí, Miro, or Dreams to try and draw into an idea.

 

Some of my work that I have tried to move toward painterly expression.  These are done over the last couple of years and featured elsewhere on the blog site, but i found it an interesting look back on where I am going.

ABSTRACT, photography

Continuing with Abstract Portraits

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I have written already about exploring what a photograph is, and what is a portrait.  Continuing to look into the work of Sally Mann I decided to do a series of myself to add on to this continuing on this path of looking into myself in the project. I originally included this in the first post about abstract portraits, but I wanted to include it on its own.

ABSTRACT, ART, FINE ART, photography

Long Exposure Experiment Part II

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I wanted to show the Images not in a the triptych forms.  These come from much experimentation, and trial in creating a something more abstract.  Focusing on the media and television creating these long exposure and surreal images.  Dealing with something of media overload.  I plan on following this deeper trying to create new images and experimenting with different things, different types of moving images and lenses, to try and get different effects.

Please see previous post on this subject

ABSTRACT, ART, FINE ART, photography

Long Exposure Expirement

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Up extremely late one night I decided to experiment with using long exposure and the television.  Setting the camera on a tripod at approximately viewing level I made 30 sec plus exposures.  I find this to be an extension of my previous work in connecting with Penelope Umbrico. Here I am allowing the camera to observe media.  The camera is watching what I am watching and creating something new and a little different.

As a photographer I value having the knowledge to create tack sharp beautiful images, but i also enjoy exploring what a still image can be.  In this world of short video clips, and instant live streaming, to me it is interesting to freeze a half a minute of that stream into a still image.  There are faces but they are blurred and ghostly.  Identifications have been removed only these images of ghostly presence remain.  Do any of us remember the things we have viewed over the last 12 hours?  The things we watch are we really seeing what we do.  I feel these images bring all of these things into question?

Exploring my relationship with technology is an interesting concept.  Something I think we all should explore a little.  Constant News feed tickers, vines, memes, feeds what have you is constant noise.  I feel this though process began in the fall last year in exploring the landscape work of Penelope Umbrico, looking at classic land scape images in a new way.  I feel like I am exploring repurposing, altering the world around me to create no works.